I was just going to post one of my sermons, but some tag in the html is preventing this from happening and I'm too tired/lazy at the moment to sort it out. Boo. Hopefully I'll get that worked out some time soon. Oh well.
In other news, I'm still super excited about the PhD news. I've heard from a few more places since then-I was accepted to another program (although news on funding is forthcoming-it's not a great fit, but it was nice to know they want me!), wait-listed at a place I expected to be totally rejected from, and rejected from another which really wasn't a great fit but was in the area. That puts me at 2 acceptances, 1 wait-list, and 2 rejections. Not too shabby, considering last year I didn't get in anywhere (including the place that wait-listed me!). I don't know where I'm at on the one wait-list, but I decided to stay on it for now and see if anyone kicks back their offer thereby opening me a spot. Of the places I'm still waiting to hear from, only 2 would be good fits-and one of those places doesn't necessarily guarantee funding and the other is a super long shot that I'm not expecting to get into anyway, so there you go. One of the four I seriously have no idea about, and the other is the worst fit of them all so I'm not too concerned about that application at this point.
So...yeah. Once I've made it official, I'll write some post about it. I did get an email from a professor I'd be working closely with at the good fit acceptance school, asking me if I had any questions and congratulating me on admission. That made me happy : ) She was great in person and we hit it off really well, so it was nice to see that continuing. I wrote her back with a couple of questions, and will likely go for a visit just to get a sense of things from the other side of the admissions process. And I've started looking at courses for the fall, which is fun. I'm still trying to figure out the major/minor set up of this particular school's program (you have a general major, a specific major, and a minor) so I have some idea about what sorts of classes I'm looking for. I'll probably start working on the reading list pretty early too, but then again I feel like I have a pretty decent idea of the stuff I'd want on that list for the early modern English church history list-at least part of it, anyway.
Exciting! That's the best word for this. I'm so blessed that I will get to pursue this vocation-it's creative, it's dynamic, and I feel that it's really really important for the church.
Oh and after a wonderful 5 or so days of 40 something degree weather, which allowed for a great hike and a run outside yesterday (and by the way I shaved 1 min. 20 seconds off my time from last year's average!!!), the snow is back. Boo.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
:D
AHHHHH!!!!!! I just had to do that. This afternoon I got a phone call from a graduate program director telling me that I had been accepted into their program, with 5 years of full funding and a yearly stipend! Furthermore, he said that they really liked my application (although I'm guessing he said that to everyone he called as they wouldn't accept you if they didn't like the application).
I am...beside myself with excitement. Just last night I was talking to R about my doubts, and he in his calm way just reminded me that this could indeed happen. That's the great thing about my husband-he believes in me when my confidence falters. So when I called him today and told him, he said "what did I tell you yesterday?" Needless to say, I was more than happy to reply "you told me so." :D
So. I jumped up and down in the house and squealed after I got off the phone (I wish I had a video of it for you, Mom, as you're always complaining that my reactions are excited enough). I had a tough time keeping my cool on the phone with the graduate director as he was telling me the news-this program is on of my top choices-in fact, it might be my very top choice (given the other programs I applied to, how I fit into this program and their faculty, how my conversations with their faculty went, and the schools I've yet to hear from-I got rejected from Yale by the way). I'll post specifics once I've made it official-but for now, I'm just so happy. This is something I've felt called to very strongly, and I'm so blessed that I will be able to pursue this vocation.
ROCK ON!!!!!!!
I am...beside myself with excitement. Just last night I was talking to R about my doubts, and he in his calm way just reminded me that this could indeed happen. That's the great thing about my husband-he believes in me when my confidence falters. So when I called him today and told him, he said "what did I tell you yesterday?" Needless to say, I was more than happy to reply "you told me so." :D
So. I jumped up and down in the house and squealed after I got off the phone (I wish I had a video of it for you, Mom, as you're always complaining that my reactions are excited enough). I had a tough time keeping my cool on the phone with the graduate director as he was telling me the news-this program is on of my top choices-in fact, it might be my very top choice (given the other programs I applied to, how I fit into this program and their faculty, how my conversations with their faculty went, and the schools I've yet to hear from-I got rejected from Yale by the way). I'll post specifics once I've made it official-but for now, I'm just so happy. This is something I've felt called to very strongly, and I'm so blessed that I will be able to pursue this vocation.
ROCK ON!!!!!!!
Friday, February 12, 2010
Remembering Alan
Yesterday I got some heartbreaking news. A close friend of mine from college, Alan, committed suicide last Friday. We hadn't spoken in some years-he was always kind of bohemian and hard to get a hold of-but the news hit me really, really hard. I thought I would take a moment here to remember this wonderful person.
Alan was...different. Different than anyone I've ever known. I think the best way to describe him is as a living poem-beautiful, deep, yet only truly understood by the author. There always seemed to be some part of him that I just couldn't tap in to, no matter how much time we spent together (which was a fair amount). I'm not one who talks about "figuring people out," as I find that ridiculous, but there was an air of the enigmatic about Alan. He lived in a small apartment on College St. near the top of the hill. His bedroom was also his kitchen, and his computer room had one recliner, a desk, a computer, and a desk chair. He was the picture of simple living.
I have nothing but great memories of Alan. We met in a seminar in college, Buddhism in America I believe. I remember being fascinated by him (he sat on the other side of the seminar table from me), and slowly we got to know one another. We were TA's in the intro to Asian Religions class together. What was great is that our conversations and friendship went way beyond class (in fact I don't think we spent tons of time talking about class topics). We went to see My Morning Jacket together in Nashville. He gave me an aloe plant that survived for years even when I didn't water it. I still have the fan he brought me from Myanmar (I think that's where he went...maybe Cambodia) that hung on my walls in graduate school. I remember eating purple rice with coconut milk with him in his apartment. Or ordering pizza and drinking hard cider, and then both of us having horrible stomach aches afterwards. He's the reason I drink hot tea-it was a jasmine tea that he got me to try that helped me realize hot tea could actually be good. I remember him telling me about how he went hiking at Mammoth Cave and night came on sooner than he expected, so he slept on the side of the trail with the map as his blanket. We went to Barnes and Noble one night, came out to the parking lot, and his truck had popped out of gear and rolled into the door of the person parked next to him. Before that he had this great Jeep Cherokee that I was jealous of. He is the only person I've known who I thought would be a good monk. He gave me a copy of an Appalachian music cd that he called "Hilary's Reel" and continues to be one of my all time favorite albums. I listen to it constantly, and now it will have more meaning.
As I said before, Alan and I hadn't spoken for many years. Once I graduated from WKU and headed to graduate school, we fell out of touch-which I'll admit is partially my fault. Though as I said in my defense he's always been really hard to get a hold of (I remember just having to walk to his apartment sometimes because he wouldn't answer his phone-or he'd lost it). I learned yesterday that he'd been working with the homeless in Virginia and was suffering from depression and had some questions he wanted to ask God directly. Even though we hadn't spoken in a while, I thought (and still think) of Alan often. There was some part of me that felt...safe? warm? I don't know the word....knowing he was somewhere in the world doing good work. He was one of the most compassionate people I have ever had the honor of knowing, and the world has lost a truly good and beautiful person.
Alan-I hope you've found some peace. You were a wonderful human being, very much loved, and we'll miss you. May light perpetual shine upon you, my friend.
Alan was...different. Different than anyone I've ever known. I think the best way to describe him is as a living poem-beautiful, deep, yet only truly understood by the author. There always seemed to be some part of him that I just couldn't tap in to, no matter how much time we spent together (which was a fair amount). I'm not one who talks about "figuring people out," as I find that ridiculous, but there was an air of the enigmatic about Alan. He lived in a small apartment on College St. near the top of the hill. His bedroom was also his kitchen, and his computer room had one recliner, a desk, a computer, and a desk chair. He was the picture of simple living.
I have nothing but great memories of Alan. We met in a seminar in college, Buddhism in America I believe. I remember being fascinated by him (he sat on the other side of the seminar table from me), and slowly we got to know one another. We were TA's in the intro to Asian Religions class together. What was great is that our conversations and friendship went way beyond class (in fact I don't think we spent tons of time talking about class topics). We went to see My Morning Jacket together in Nashville. He gave me an aloe plant that survived for years even when I didn't water it. I still have the fan he brought me from Myanmar (I think that's where he went...maybe Cambodia) that hung on my walls in graduate school. I remember eating purple rice with coconut milk with him in his apartment. Or ordering pizza and drinking hard cider, and then both of us having horrible stomach aches afterwards. He's the reason I drink hot tea-it was a jasmine tea that he got me to try that helped me realize hot tea could actually be good. I remember him telling me about how he went hiking at Mammoth Cave and night came on sooner than he expected, so he slept on the side of the trail with the map as his blanket. We went to Barnes and Noble one night, came out to the parking lot, and his truck had popped out of gear and rolled into the door of the person parked next to him. Before that he had this great Jeep Cherokee that I was jealous of. He is the only person I've known who I thought would be a good monk. He gave me a copy of an Appalachian music cd that he called "Hilary's Reel" and continues to be one of my all time favorite albums. I listen to it constantly, and now it will have more meaning.
As I said before, Alan and I hadn't spoken for many years. Once I graduated from WKU and headed to graduate school, we fell out of touch-which I'll admit is partially my fault. Though as I said in my defense he's always been really hard to get a hold of (I remember just having to walk to his apartment sometimes because he wouldn't answer his phone-or he'd lost it). I learned yesterday that he'd been working with the homeless in Virginia and was suffering from depression and had some questions he wanted to ask God directly. Even though we hadn't spoken in a while, I thought (and still think) of Alan often. There was some part of me that felt...safe? warm? I don't know the word....knowing he was somewhere in the world doing good work. He was one of the most compassionate people I have ever had the honor of knowing, and the world has lost a truly good and beautiful person.
Alan-I hope you've found some peace. You were a wonderful human being, very much loved, and we'll miss you. May light perpetual shine upon you, my friend.
Monday, February 08, 2010
Team in Training
Anyone who has been following this blog may have noticed something new along the right hand side of this blog...any guesses? That's right-there's a new Team in Training widget as well as a link to my personal Team in Training fundraising website.
What's this all about? Well, Team in Training is a group/event/fundraising thingy put together by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS). People train for endurance events-be they marathons, half marathons, century bike rides, triathlons, or hiking adventures-and raise money to support the research and other projects of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It's a really really great organization.
If you remember, my brother was diagnosed with Berkitt's lymphoma in November 2008. Thankfully, he has now been cancer-free for about 9 months now! LLS not only supported us through the treatments developed by their researchers, but in real, on the ground ways that probably aren't apparent to those who have not been treated for a blood cancer (or who haven't been with a family member being treated for one).
Anyway I decided while Nathan was being treated that I would do a Team in Training event-I mean, he endured chemo, the least I could do was endure some physical training to raise money that will help find a cure for blood cancers. So in May, I will be traveling with a group of people from MA to join other from around the country to hike part of the Grand Canyon. I'll be keeping a blog of my training experiences, etc. on my fundraising webpage.
Now here's where you come in. I need to raise $4,350 to participate in this program. EVERY LITTLE BIT HELPS!!!!! Anything you can give will be helpful. Just think-if 440 people gave 10 bucks, then this goal could be easily met. So PLEASE, help in any way you can. The fundraising widget will take you to a donation page, while the link above it will take you to my personal fundraising page, where you can see my updates on how the training is going as well as donate. And the widget also shows how close I'm getting to my goal.
Can you help?
What's this all about? Well, Team in Training is a group/event/fundraising thingy put together by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS). People train for endurance events-be they marathons, half marathons, century bike rides, triathlons, or hiking adventures-and raise money to support the research and other projects of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It's a really really great organization.
If you remember, my brother was diagnosed with Berkitt's lymphoma in November 2008. Thankfully, he has now been cancer-free for about 9 months now! LLS not only supported us through the treatments developed by their researchers, but in real, on the ground ways that probably aren't apparent to those who have not been treated for a blood cancer (or who haven't been with a family member being treated for one).
Anyway I decided while Nathan was being treated that I would do a Team in Training event-I mean, he endured chemo, the least I could do was endure some physical training to raise money that will help find a cure for blood cancers. So in May, I will be traveling with a group of people from MA to join other from around the country to hike part of the Grand Canyon. I'll be keeping a blog of my training experiences, etc. on my fundraising webpage.
Now here's where you come in. I need to raise $4,350 to participate in this program. EVERY LITTLE BIT HELPS!!!!! Anything you can give will be helpful. Just think-if 440 people gave 10 bucks, then this goal could be easily met. So PLEASE, help in any way you can. The fundraising widget will take you to a donation page, while the link above it will take you to my personal fundraising page, where you can see my updates on how the training is going as well as donate. And the widget also shows how close I'm getting to my goal.
Can you help?
Saturday, February 06, 2010
3 cubed
I would have put a superscript in that title, but I'm not sure what the html for it is, and I'm not really feeling in the mood to look it up. So there we go.
Anyway I'm 3 cubed now! 9 is my favorite number, so one could also say I'm 9+9+9 which is nice and trinitarian in a way. Which I like for obvious reasons. I had a good birthday-R and I had lunch together, then met some friends for dinner and bowling. We were supposed to go bowling for my birthday two years ago and it snowed so that never happened. I've been telling him he owes me bowling for the past two years and now he's made good on that one. Woohoo! I didn't win, but I did come in second (losing only by 1 point on the 2nd game). It was great.
This morning I headed to the kick off for Team in Training. I'll post more on that this week, but it's a big thing I'm doing this spring and I'll be putting up a link for you all to follow for my TNT website (it is in support of the Leukemia and Lymphoma society, but like I said more on that later).
The next few weeks look like they're going to be pretty crazy-lots of evening stuff at work coming up, which can be hard because when a meeting at work ends at 8:30, I don't get home until 10. And then I have to be up and ready to be back at work by 9 the next day, which involves leaving home between 7-7:30 am. The lack of sleep won't be the hardest part, I think. The challenge will be getting my workouts in and actually getting to see my husband. We don't get enough hang out time during the week as it is, since we both get home around 7 and then go to the gym and don't sit down for dinner until 9:30. But Ash Wednesday is almost upon us, which brings with it Shrove Tuesday. And this week is a meeting week. And then the week after all of that I'm going to KY for diocesan convention and hang out time with the fam.
The bright side of this is that hopefully it will keep me busy enough to focus less on waiting for PhD admissions decisions. There are days when I feel like I put in a great application, and other days when I feel that despite of that application there were lots of others who probably put in better applications. And then I start freaking out about what I'm going to do if I don't get in, in terms of finding another part time job. Bleh. It's really really stressful, but I should start hearing something in the next few weeks.
In the meantime I've been reading some good stuff-right now I'm working on Eamon Duffy's The Fires of Faith, and will post a review of that soon as well as two books by Helen Fielding I've been reading. So keep your eyes open for those.
We brewed a couple of weeks ago (A sweet stout, or chocolate stout depending on who you talk to) which means bottling day is fast approaching. We got some tips from a friend that should make it less messy AND I found a piece of the kit that I thought we didn't get that should make the siphon work waaaaaaaaaay better. Bottling last time was very wet and sticky (there's lots of sugar involved) but hopefully this time it won't be. I like beer but sitting covered in it for an hour and a half was kind of not that great. And then the beer should be ready to go in a month! I think our next brew is going to be a wheat beer we've got-just in time for spring! One (or both) of the yeasts we have left are starting to age a bit so we may have to buy more. Luckily they're not stupid expensive.
That's about all I've got. Hopefully my blog posts this week will be a little more planned. This was more of a stream of consciousness thing-albeit more organized as my real stream of consciousness is never this cohesive-at least it wouldn't be to anyone who's not me.
Hope you're staying warm and dry!
Anyway I'm 3 cubed now! 9 is my favorite number, so one could also say I'm 9+9+9 which is nice and trinitarian in a way. Which I like for obvious reasons. I had a good birthday-R and I had lunch together, then met some friends for dinner and bowling. We were supposed to go bowling for my birthday two years ago and it snowed so that never happened. I've been telling him he owes me bowling for the past two years and now he's made good on that one. Woohoo! I didn't win, but I did come in second (losing only by 1 point on the 2nd game). It was great.
This morning I headed to the kick off for Team in Training. I'll post more on that this week, but it's a big thing I'm doing this spring and I'll be putting up a link for you all to follow for my TNT website (it is in support of the Leukemia and Lymphoma society, but like I said more on that later).
The next few weeks look like they're going to be pretty crazy-lots of evening stuff at work coming up, which can be hard because when a meeting at work ends at 8:30, I don't get home until 10. And then I have to be up and ready to be back at work by 9 the next day, which involves leaving home between 7-7:30 am. The lack of sleep won't be the hardest part, I think. The challenge will be getting my workouts in and actually getting to see my husband. We don't get enough hang out time during the week as it is, since we both get home around 7 and then go to the gym and don't sit down for dinner until 9:30. But Ash Wednesday is almost upon us, which brings with it Shrove Tuesday. And this week is a meeting week. And then the week after all of that I'm going to KY for diocesan convention and hang out time with the fam.
The bright side of this is that hopefully it will keep me busy enough to focus less on waiting for PhD admissions decisions. There are days when I feel like I put in a great application, and other days when I feel that despite of that application there were lots of others who probably put in better applications. And then I start freaking out about what I'm going to do if I don't get in, in terms of finding another part time job. Bleh. It's really really stressful, but I should start hearing something in the next few weeks.
In the meantime I've been reading some good stuff-right now I'm working on Eamon Duffy's The Fires of Faith, and will post a review of that soon as well as two books by Helen Fielding I've been reading. So keep your eyes open for those.
We brewed a couple of weeks ago (A sweet stout, or chocolate stout depending on who you talk to) which means bottling day is fast approaching. We got some tips from a friend that should make it less messy AND I found a piece of the kit that I thought we didn't get that should make the siphon work waaaaaaaaaay better. Bottling last time was very wet and sticky (there's lots of sugar involved) but hopefully this time it won't be. I like beer but sitting covered in it for an hour and a half was kind of not that great. And then the beer should be ready to go in a month! I think our next brew is going to be a wheat beer we've got-just in time for spring! One (or both) of the yeasts we have left are starting to age a bit so we may have to buy more. Luckily they're not stupid expensive.
That's about all I've got. Hopefully my blog posts this week will be a little more planned. This was more of a stream of consciousness thing-albeit more organized as my real stream of consciousness is never this cohesive-at least it wouldn't be to anyone who's not me.
Hope you're staying warm and dry!
Monday, February 01, 2010
Milestone and Resolution FAIL
Two things. Well, three really.
1. I didn't post last week-so much for that "resolution." But the great thing is that I can just write it off as a bad job and try to do better this week. Hopefully.
2. You may have noticed a blog layout change. I do this every now and then, mostly because I just get bored with the way the blog looks. This time it was largely due to the fact that I wanted to include a picture in the header, and my old format wasn't the best for such a thing. This picture is bigger than I want it, but my edited picture keeps coming up as corrupt for some reason so whatever. For those who are interested, this picture was taken in Istria in May, 2008 on the way to this tiny church with really great murals on the inside. The countryside was beautiful, and this is one of my favorite pictures from that day.
3. Now, for the real meat of the post. I reached a running milestone this weekend! I posted a while back about how I'm a pretty slow runner, but then I realized I run about the speed a butterfly flies so that was a nice discovery. I've still been trying to get my speed up, though, and this weekend I reached a new level. Usually on the treadmill I run between 5.4 and 5.6 mph, with elevation varying depending on the run setting I'm using (when I do a 5K a couple of times a week there are some hills, and then on "easy" days I just run on 0 elevation). R and I have been upping our cardio times to 45-60 minutes/day. This weekend I got on the treadmill expecting to do my usual 5.4-5.6 speed, but after about 15 minutes I decided to see what would happen if I bumped it up to 6.0 mph. I did so, planning to do 10 minutes on that if I could (I'd only ever run about 2 minutes at 6.0 before). At the ten minute mark I decided to see if I could make 15. Then if I could make 20. Then...25. Then I felt like my legs were going to fall off, so I walked for 5 minutes and THEN finished is up with another 5 bringing it to 30 whole minutes at 6.0! I then ran another 15 at 5.4. I think I ended up running about 5.3 miles on Saturday, which is the most I've ever run and the fastest I've ever run. Wahoo!
Yesterday my legs were definitely sore, but it was so cool to know that I could go that speed for that amount of time. Hopefully I'll be able to build up the endurance so it doesn't feel quite so out of control at the end of the 30 minutes, and then 6.0 can be my normal pace and I can stay there for a while. Sweet.
As R said, it's crazy to think about how far we've come in terms of running since we started in the winter of 2007 by running 1 minute and walking 1 minute for 30 minutes. But the method from the book R got for Christmas from his brother worked, and here we are running for more extended periods of time. Awesome.
In other big news, I'm doing Team in Training with the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. I'll have another post forthcoming on that and how YOU can help out. : )
1. I didn't post last week-so much for that "resolution." But the great thing is that I can just write it off as a bad job and try to do better this week. Hopefully.
2. You may have noticed a blog layout change. I do this every now and then, mostly because I just get bored with the way the blog looks. This time it was largely due to the fact that I wanted to include a picture in the header, and my old format wasn't the best for such a thing. This picture is bigger than I want it, but my edited picture keeps coming up as corrupt for some reason so whatever. For those who are interested, this picture was taken in Istria in May, 2008 on the way to this tiny church with really great murals on the inside. The countryside was beautiful, and this is one of my favorite pictures from that day.
3. Now, for the real meat of the post. I reached a running milestone this weekend! I posted a while back about how I'm a pretty slow runner, but then I realized I run about the speed a butterfly flies so that was a nice discovery. I've still been trying to get my speed up, though, and this weekend I reached a new level. Usually on the treadmill I run between 5.4 and 5.6 mph, with elevation varying depending on the run setting I'm using (when I do a 5K a couple of times a week there are some hills, and then on "easy" days I just run on 0 elevation). R and I have been upping our cardio times to 45-60 minutes/day. This weekend I got on the treadmill expecting to do my usual 5.4-5.6 speed, but after about 15 minutes I decided to see what would happen if I bumped it up to 6.0 mph. I did so, planning to do 10 minutes on that if I could (I'd only ever run about 2 minutes at 6.0 before). At the ten minute mark I decided to see if I could make 15. Then if I could make 20. Then...25. Then I felt like my legs were going to fall off, so I walked for 5 minutes and THEN finished is up with another 5 bringing it to 30 whole minutes at 6.0! I then ran another 15 at 5.4. I think I ended up running about 5.3 miles on Saturday, which is the most I've ever run and the fastest I've ever run. Wahoo!
Yesterday my legs were definitely sore, but it was so cool to know that I could go that speed for that amount of time. Hopefully I'll be able to build up the endurance so it doesn't feel quite so out of control at the end of the 30 minutes, and then 6.0 can be my normal pace and I can stay there for a while. Sweet.
As R said, it's crazy to think about how far we've come in terms of running since we started in the winter of 2007 by running 1 minute and walking 1 minute for 30 minutes. But the method from the book R got for Christmas from his brother worked, and here we are running for more extended periods of time. Awesome.
In other big news, I'm doing Team in Training with the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. I'll have another post forthcoming on that and how YOU can help out. : )
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Musical Literacy
I recently started playing in a local community band. I found out about this group through the local newspaper, emailed the director, and went to my first rehearsal a couple of weeks ago. As a clarinetist, it's usually not too hard to get into wind ensembles and concert bands, as they're always short. It's been fun-the hard part has been adjusting to the fact that it's a community band and not the type of ensemble I'm used to playing in, but it's a place for my to indulge my musical side, which always makes my soul feel better.
Anyway, the theme for the spring concert is outer space, or something like that. All of the music we're playing has some space-y thing in the title. Two of the pieces we're playing are from Gustav Holst's The Planets ("Jupiter" and "Uranus," to be specific). I've played "Mars" in both wind ensembles and orchestras before, and I've played the "Jupiter" in orchestra. Plus, this work of Holst's is wonderful and I know it decently well and imagined that everyone in the band would have recognized the pieces (especially "Jupiter"-it and "Mars" are probably the two most well known movements of the work) as The Planets is well known and almost movie-esque, in an early twentieth century kind of way. Imagine my surprise then, when one of the clarinets piped up after we finished "Jupiter" and said "Where did you find this piece?" After rehearsal, several players asked me the same sorts of questions. My response (mentally) is below:
WHAT?!?!?!?! Are you serious? You're a musician and you've never heard Holst's The Planets?!
I spent the entire drive home thinking about this. I'm still in disbelief. It got me to thinking about musical literacy in our society. You hear about the "cultural canon" or "great books" so much, but it's all about literature. Not that I have anything against literature-I study it, for crying out loud! But I find that music is rarely-if ever-included in discussions of cultural literacy. You could probably mention Beethoven or Mozart to people, and maybe even Tchaikovsky (if it's close to Christmas) and folks would know who you were talking about. But when you run into musicians who have never heard of Holst, the problem of musical literacy becomes apparent.
I don't even know how we approach this problem. I'm just...flabbergasted. Music transcends boundaries in ways that reading can't (language barriers don't exist here, although cultural tastes in music do, but I'd argue not to the same extent as language). I just want to go into rehearsal and hand out copies of The Planets, and even the soundtrack to Fantasia 2000 (which I find to be the best intro to the range of classical music, played by the oh so wonderful Chicago Symphony Orchestra) just so people would know these pieces. I mean, listening to modern music is enriched when you know the standards, just as knowing the standards in jazz helps you pick up on tags and quotes during improv sessions. Case in point-John Williams. I am convinced that "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana was a direct influence on the piece "Duel of the Fates" from the score to Star Wars: Episode One. Aside from the obvious similarity in title ("O fortune!" vs. "Duel of the Fates"), the pieces have a similar sound. The first time I heard it in the movie theater, I was immediately struck by this and my experience of that musical moment was deepened because I knew (and had played, for that matter) then Orff setting.
I apologize if this post seems scattered or doesn't make sense. I'm just still kind of astonished by people not knowing the Holst piece. Crazy.
Anyway, the theme for the spring concert is outer space, or something like that. All of the music we're playing has some space-y thing in the title. Two of the pieces we're playing are from Gustav Holst's The Planets ("Jupiter" and "Uranus," to be specific). I've played "Mars" in both wind ensembles and orchestras before, and I've played the "Jupiter" in orchestra. Plus, this work of Holst's is wonderful and I know it decently well and imagined that everyone in the band would have recognized the pieces (especially "Jupiter"-it and "Mars" are probably the two most well known movements of the work) as The Planets is well known and almost movie-esque, in an early twentieth century kind of way. Imagine my surprise then, when one of the clarinets piped up after we finished "Jupiter" and said "Where did you find this piece?" After rehearsal, several players asked me the same sorts of questions. My response (mentally) is below:
WHAT?!?!?!?! Are you serious? You're a musician and you've never heard Holst's The Planets?!
I spent the entire drive home thinking about this. I'm still in disbelief. It got me to thinking about musical literacy in our society. You hear about the "cultural canon" or "great books" so much, but it's all about literature. Not that I have anything against literature-I study it, for crying out loud! But I find that music is rarely-if ever-included in discussions of cultural literacy. You could probably mention Beethoven or Mozart to people, and maybe even Tchaikovsky (if it's close to Christmas) and folks would know who you were talking about. But when you run into musicians who have never heard of Holst, the problem of musical literacy becomes apparent.
I don't even know how we approach this problem. I'm just...flabbergasted. Music transcends boundaries in ways that reading can't (language barriers don't exist here, although cultural tastes in music do, but I'd argue not to the same extent as language). I just want to go into rehearsal and hand out copies of The Planets, and even the soundtrack to Fantasia 2000 (which I find to be the best intro to the range of classical music, played by the oh so wonderful Chicago Symphony Orchestra) just so people would know these pieces. I mean, listening to modern music is enriched when you know the standards, just as knowing the standards in jazz helps you pick up on tags and quotes during improv sessions. Case in point-John Williams. I am convinced that "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana was a direct influence on the piece "Duel of the Fates" from the score to Star Wars: Episode One. Aside from the obvious similarity in title ("O fortune!" vs. "Duel of the Fates"), the pieces have a similar sound. The first time I heard it in the movie theater, I was immediately struck by this and my experience of that musical moment was deepened because I knew (and had played, for that matter) then Orff setting.
I apologize if this post seems scattered or doesn't make sense. I'm just still kind of astonished by people not knowing the Holst piece. Crazy.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Ordination
Whew. It was a big weekend for me, to put it mildly. For those who don't know, I was ordained to the priesthood on Saturday (officially in Christ's one holy catholic and apostolic Church, but specifically I'm Episcopalian). It was a big moment-I won't say that I felt ontologically transformed or anything-which is fodder for a whole discussion about women's ordination-but it really was a great service. Because travel is so expensive (for me, specifically), we had the ordination at my parish up here in MA. My bishop and family traveled from Kentucky for the service. The bishop even cried at one point-I wasn't sure he was going to make it through what he had to say when he was presenting the Bible. A few priests from the area came to support me, and my good friend came to preach. Several of my close friends from Yale came up, which really meant a lot to me. I think joy is probably the best way to describe that service. Everything was great-the musicians were wonderful, the preaching was top notch, and it was really nice to be surrounded by my parish at that moment. They did a great job with the resounding "IT IS" and "WE WILL" when asked if I should be ordained and would they support me. And it was wonderful having the rector's presence by my side-I think that was a calming influence, as I was (strangely perhaps) nervous before the service, but once it got going I was OK.
Sunday I celebrated the Eucharist for the first time. Honestly, I was more nervous about that than about the ordination. I had visions of that scene in the movie Luther where Luther spills wine at his first celebration. If I had it wouldn't have been the end of the world, but I wanted to do a good job. AND I was chanting the service, as is the custom at the church, and had practiced to make sure I knew the part well enough. I thought it went alright, and many people came up and told me that they thought the chanting was great and it looked as though I had been celebrating for years. I should note here, though, that I was never one of those kids who "play Mass" at home. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it honestly never occurred to me to do so. If someone had asked me to play that with them, I probably would have looked at them like they were crazy and gone outside to ride my bike. But I did spend many a Sunday acolyting, so the service itself is ingrained within me. Wednesday I've got a Rite One healing service, which will be interesting as well. Luckily I'm not completely unfamiliar with Rite One, so it should be OK. I need to memorize the healing prayer.
Other than that, it was great hanging out with my family. Unfortunately my brother wasn't able to make it up due to a quartet competition, but my mom, dad, sister, and nephew were able to make it. I swear my nephew gets more and more fun every time I see him. And it was a blast to see how he and R interacted! Sunday afternoon my sister and I played Mario Party on the Wii and my nephew wanted nothing more than to play with R. It was great! I'm looking forward to going home in February/March to spend more time with them.
They're still driving as I write-it's about 1000 miles so it's a long haul. We had a snow stormette last night, too, which made their morning travel a little messy. R and I had to shovel tons of heavy snow too, which was lame. After we were done I came in and looked at cruises. I've never been on one and would love to go; maybe for now I'll just cut up the pineapple someone at church gave me (as a gag gift when I told her I wanted pineapples for the flowers at the ordination) and make a pina colada or something. Or just eat it plain. I don't have the ingredients for a pina colada, although I guess they're not that hard to find. Whatever. Pineapple makes me think of warm places and summer. And I am so ready for summer.
Sunday I celebrated the Eucharist for the first time. Honestly, I was more nervous about that than about the ordination. I had visions of that scene in the movie Luther where Luther spills wine at his first celebration. If I had it wouldn't have been the end of the world, but I wanted to do a good job. AND I was chanting the service, as is the custom at the church, and had practiced to make sure I knew the part well enough. I thought it went alright, and many people came up and told me that they thought the chanting was great and it looked as though I had been celebrating for years. I should note here, though, that I was never one of those kids who "play Mass" at home. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it honestly never occurred to me to do so. If someone had asked me to play that with them, I probably would have looked at them like they were crazy and gone outside to ride my bike. But I did spend many a Sunday acolyting, so the service itself is ingrained within me. Wednesday I've got a Rite One healing service, which will be interesting as well. Luckily I'm not completely unfamiliar with Rite One, so it should be OK. I need to memorize the healing prayer.
Other than that, it was great hanging out with my family. Unfortunately my brother wasn't able to make it up due to a quartet competition, but my mom, dad, sister, and nephew were able to make it. I swear my nephew gets more and more fun every time I see him. And it was a blast to see how he and R interacted! Sunday afternoon my sister and I played Mario Party on the Wii and my nephew wanted nothing more than to play with R. It was great! I'm looking forward to going home in February/March to spend more time with them.
They're still driving as I write-it's about 1000 miles so it's a long haul. We had a snow stormette last night, too, which made their morning travel a little messy. R and I had to shovel tons of heavy snow too, which was lame. After we were done I came in and looked at cruises. I've never been on one and would love to go; maybe for now I'll just cut up the pineapple someone at church gave me (as a gag gift when I told her I wanted pineapples for the flowers at the ordination) and make a pina colada or something. Or just eat it plain. I don't have the ingredients for a pina colada, although I guess they're not that hard to find. Whatever. Pineapple makes me think of warm places and summer. And I am so ready for summer.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Haiti
I'm sure everyone's heard of the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti yesterday. Already the poorest country in the western hemisphere, it's hard to imagine what this is going to do to their population. The news pouring out of there is pretty awful-for me, at least, it's bringing back memories of the tsunami that hit southeast Asia a few years ago. Unfortunately there's so little infrastructure in Haiti to begin with that I imagine relief work is going to be that much more challenging.
My parish sponsors a school in Haiti (some folks were going to go down in February to help rebuild the walls of the school). Furthermore, the Episcopal Church has been a pretty strong presence throughout the country, helping run over 200 schools, not to mention other facilities like clinics and hospitals. Episcopal relief and development has set up a Haiti fund to help aid in the response and relief of the folks down there.
And if you're the praying type, feel free to do that too.
Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, 215).
My parish sponsors a school in Haiti (some folks were going to go down in February to help rebuild the walls of the school). Furthermore, the Episcopal Church has been a pretty strong presence throughout the country, helping run over 200 schools, not to mention other facilities like clinics and hospitals. Episcopal relief and development has set up a Haiti fund to help aid in the response and relief of the folks down there.
And if you're the praying type, feel free to do that too.
Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, 215).
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Album Review: Nickel Creek, Nickel Creek
Somehow I went years without hearing anything by Nickel Creek. I'm not sure how this happened--but it did and fortunately I've finally solved this problem. The band, probably best defined as bluegrass or folk, is made up of Chris Thile and siblings Sara and Sean Watkins (interesting factoid-Christ Thile's dad worked at Murray State for a while, and Chris attended for a few semesters. This fact makes it even more crazy that I'd never heard anything by this group before-although to be fair I had heard of them). The group is currently not performing together (they're all doing solo stuff). I bought two of their albums with Christmas giftcards. Their last album, Why Should the Fire Die?, I got because I wasn't paying attention when I bought it. I'd actually meant to purchase the self titled debut album. Lucky me. Seriously. I'll stick to the self-titled album for now, though, as the last cd deserves its own post.Anyway. Nickel Creek was released in 2000, produced by Alison Krauss. From what I can tell, it's been their most successful album so far (went gold in 2002 I think, and platinum after that). Listening to it once will tell you why--it's a great mix of instrumental pieces, and a blend of more traditional (or at least traditional sounding) and contemporary stuff. The instrumental standouts for me would be the opening track "Ode to a Butterfly" and "In the House of Tom Bombadil," the first because it's a great opening number and I'm a sucker for folk-bluegrass instrumental jams, and the second because not only is it a great song but it references one of the more intriguing characters from the Lord of the Rings (that's stuff for another post, however, but just let it be noted that I am incredibly interested in Bombadil and his place in the Story of Middle Earth).
The "lyric" songs, for lack of a better term (it's 10 PM on a Sunday night, which means I'm not at my intellectual best but BLOG I WILL), are great as well. Standouts include "The Lighthouse's Tale", "The Fox", and "When You Come Back Down." This last track is likely a fan favorite-a really great love song, but not exactly a story so to speak. The lighthouse and fox tracks, however, follow that great tradition of folk music and story. "The Fox" will appeal to listeners of all ages, but I imagine my 3 year old nephew would get a kick out of it. "The Lighthouse's Tale" is rather surprising-it's a story told from the perspective of the lighthouse, as opposed to a song about a lighthouse. Strange as it sounds, it works. The point is, though, that not only are these good songs to listen to, but they're great stories.
In this album, Nickel Creek displays an undeniable musical talent-these folks can really play. But not only that, they can write songs and sing you to sleep with them. The harmonies are great and the group members seem to melt together in some ways. It's really lovely. The influence from Alison Krauss is apparent, but not overwhelming. Perhaps her presence is even more noted when one listens to this album in relation to the last one (Why Should the Fire Die?), which Krauss did not produce.
If you like folksy-bluegrass music, you'll love this band. In fact, I've already gotten another person tuned into Nickel Creek. Neither of us could believe we hadn't heard them before. Nickel Creek is a great starting place for their musical talent, and is definitely worth the money. So go buy it, but don't blame me when your toes are done wore out from tapping so much.
Friday, January 08, 2010
2010
So. That was 2009. What about 2010? What kinds of hopes and goals to I have for myself? I have a few, and like I said they're not really resolutions but whatever.
2010 Hopes:
-That I actually get into a PhD program that funds me and I can start studying church history at the doctoral level. This is probably my biggest hope for 2010, but it's a hard hope because my applications are in and now all I'm doing is waiting and praying. And that's tough!
-That, if I don't get into a PhD program, I can faithfully trust God to help me discern where to go next. I'll have to find some kind of supplemental employment at the very least (living on a salary and a half in New England is really hard), and I pray that if I go that road it will be an employment that doesn't feel like it's sucking out my soul.
2010 Goals:
-That I can get my weight to 175-180. I checked, and last year at the beginning of January I was at 215. I started working out more and then joined Weight Watchers and lost a good amount of weight. I quit WW in November, though, as it's an expense I can't have right now. I've leveled off between 185-187 it seems, which is still almost 30 lbs down from last year, which is awesome! I'm really proud of that, because I worked really hard at it. But I've been stuck at this weight for 3 months now, and while I know everyone has a weight their body tends to stop at, I feel that I can get mine down lower. It's just doing to take some more work. R and I have been great about the gym in the last couple of weeks, so we just have to keep it up. Hopefully I can up the cardio to an hour a day, with weights three times a week (right now cardio is around 35-40 minutes a day).
-That I can run some sort of race this year. I was going to do something with Team in Training at the Grand Canyon, but I have a work-related event that weekend. Oh well. There's something at Disney in January, so maybe I can convince R that we will form a team and do it! Maybe my brother and sister would too. That would be cool. We'll see-they don't post winter events until later. I find with running and fitness that I need a tangible goal, and I feel that a 10 miler or half marathon would be a good one (I do a 5K pretty regularly-as in once or twice a week-as it is so that doesn't seem like much of a goal to me at this point).
-That I can be a more faithful blogger. I'd like to try to blog 3 times a week at least (which I've obviously not done so far, but 2 in one day is doing pretty well! One more this week and I'm set!) I'm planning to include sermons on here, and to be more faithful about my book, movie, and music reviews (as well as the occasional cool thing to do in New England post).
-To bike more. I got a 2006 Rockhopper in the fall for cheap. R is going to help me overhaul it, and I'm hoping to get some shoes so I can learn to use clipless peddles and be awesome at it. And I just love biking, so I'd like to do that intensely. It's good cross-training for a race anyway.
-To camp more. I love camping, hiking, and backpacking. And now I live in a perfect place to do it and I don't. I already have most of the equipment, and it's good equipment. One of my goals for the summer is to do some good camping trips and to share them with R.
So there you have it. My personal hopes and goals for 2010. Here's to a good year!
2010 Hopes:
-That I actually get into a PhD program that funds me and I can start studying church history at the doctoral level. This is probably my biggest hope for 2010, but it's a hard hope because my applications are in and now all I'm doing is waiting and praying. And that's tough!
-That, if I don't get into a PhD program, I can faithfully trust God to help me discern where to go next. I'll have to find some kind of supplemental employment at the very least (living on a salary and a half in New England is really hard), and I pray that if I go that road it will be an employment that doesn't feel like it's sucking out my soul.
2010 Goals:
-That I can get my weight to 175-180. I checked, and last year at the beginning of January I was at 215. I started working out more and then joined Weight Watchers and lost a good amount of weight. I quit WW in November, though, as it's an expense I can't have right now. I've leveled off between 185-187 it seems, which is still almost 30 lbs down from last year, which is awesome! I'm really proud of that, because I worked really hard at it. But I've been stuck at this weight for 3 months now, and while I know everyone has a weight their body tends to stop at, I feel that I can get mine down lower. It's just doing to take some more work. R and I have been great about the gym in the last couple of weeks, so we just have to keep it up. Hopefully I can up the cardio to an hour a day, with weights three times a week (right now cardio is around 35-40 minutes a day).
-That I can run some sort of race this year. I was going to do something with Team in Training at the Grand Canyon, but I have a work-related event that weekend. Oh well. There's something at Disney in January, so maybe I can convince R that we will form a team and do it! Maybe my brother and sister would too. That would be cool. We'll see-they don't post winter events until later. I find with running and fitness that I need a tangible goal, and I feel that a 10 miler or half marathon would be a good one (I do a 5K pretty regularly-as in once or twice a week-as it is so that doesn't seem like much of a goal to me at this point).
-That I can be a more faithful blogger. I'd like to try to blog 3 times a week at least (which I've obviously not done so far, but 2 in one day is doing pretty well! One more this week and I'm set!) I'm planning to include sermons on here, and to be more faithful about my book, movie, and music reviews (as well as the occasional cool thing to do in New England post).
-To bike more. I got a 2006 Rockhopper in the fall for cheap. R is going to help me overhaul it, and I'm hoping to get some shoes so I can learn to use clipless peddles and be awesome at it. And I just love biking, so I'd like to do that intensely. It's good cross-training for a race anyway.
-To camp more. I love camping, hiking, and backpacking. And now I live in a perfect place to do it and I don't. I already have most of the equipment, and it's good equipment. One of my goals for the summer is to do some good camping trips and to share them with R.
So there you have it. My personal hopes and goals for 2010. Here's to a good year!
2009
Happy New Year!!!
I realize, given what I'm about to post in this blog, that I'm egregiously behind on my postings. But such is life and I have my own excuses (namely Christmas as a minister-it's a slightly busy time of year) but regardless. I've been absent from the blog for a while but...here I am.
During my "blog break" I thought about why it is I blog in the first place. I mean, I really don't think there are untold numbers of people who read this thing. Maybe 10. However, I feel that I have things to share and that maybe-eventually-someone else will read something I've written and get to thinking about it. So it's really just a public forum for me to jot down my thoughts and beliefs about certain things. I toyed with just letting the blog go, but decided that the discipline of writing on it every few days would be good for me.
Now, I'm not one for making New Year's Resolutions-saying I resolve to do something has never really gotten me into gear about anything. I do realize, however, that the new year is a time for us to stop and reflect on what has happened in the past year and what we would like to accomplish in the year to come. It's a spring cleaning in a way, but one that happens in January. To be perfectly honest, though, I find Lent to be a much more helpful time for any kind of personal evaluation and cleaning up. That may just be me, though. So in the spirit of the New Year, I figured I would give a short summary of my 2009, and then go on to what I would like to accomplish for 2010 (part of which involves this blog). So, without further ado:
2009 in Review
January 1 2009 didn't feel like much of a new year, to be honest. As a person who is still set to a school calendar (even though I'm not in school at the moment-I hope to be soon and I also work with high school kids who are obviously set to a school calendar) January 1 has always felt like it was in the middle. But it was a new year nevertheless. R and I spent it with two good friends at their apartment drinking Bourbon Barrel beer and watching The Office. It was wonderful. My brother was home for the first time since his November cancer diagnosis, and it was good to be home with him, as opposed to in a hospital room or in the house he was renting (although it was a nice house, it wasn't home). School started, and then my paternal grandmother passed away very unexpectedly. My sister couldn't attend the funeral because of her job, my brother was in the hospital for chemo so my mom went out there, and I traveled to PA--through a crazy snowstorm no less-to be with my Dad. I preached at her funeral, which was especially poignant as my Gorgeous Ma was looking forward to my June ordination. While this might sound bad, though it's not meant to, I'm glad hers was the first funeral homily I gave. Barack Obama was inaugurated while I was out there for the funeral-never had I felt so much hope in a new president.
February I went to Canterbury, which was awesome as it's my favorite city in England. I also started getting rejections from the PhD programs to which I applied, and thus the job search began. That took up most of my spring, and to be honest I found it to be a pretty stressful and maybe even horrible process. I felt alone in the search, but that could just be because it was a crappy time for my whole family, I got rejected from every program, and I wasn't finding any job that would have me because I was going to be unable to move to their town. Commuting wasn't an option for many of these churches. And, on top of everything, the economy was busted and no one wanted to hire an assistant. Ugh. That was the word for February through April really. And even into May. The bright spot was that N's scans at the end of his chemo showed NO signs of cancer. Thankfulness is not the word to express how we all felt at that moment. We continue to pray over the next year that it will stay gone.
But praise God I did find a job (I think it was finalized in June, or late May-one of the two) and I graduated from YDS. Then I headed home for the summer. It was really great to be home. My nephew turned 3 and gets more and more fun every time I see him. My family was closer, I would argue, after my brother's illness and so it was good just to spend some time healing with everyone (although I don't think it was a conscious healing-it was a healing-by-presence). The hard part was that R was up here, and I was down there, and we didn't see each other for something like 8 or 10 weeks. Thank God for Skype!!!
And then...THE WEDDING!!!! It was an absolutely perfect day. I think maybe I blogged about it, so you can see what I said there. Perfect is the best word to describe it. And the honeymoon was AWESOME. We went to Disney World (I hadn't been since I was 7) and I think I may be addicted. It was so wonderful-I want to go back this year! And every year, really.
The fall brought changes. I moved into R's house and we've been working on making it our house. I started my first September without being in school. My job is great, but I admit I feel such a pull toward the academic world that it was really hard not starting classes this fall. I started PhD applications (again), however. By December I'd finished 9 applications, and am now praying that I'll be able to follow my academic vocation next fall. Otherwise it's time for more discernment, which will be hard as all discernment inevitably is. Good, but hard. R and I are adjusting the married life just great, I think. It's funny though, people would ask me pretty early on how it felt to be married. I said it felt the same, only we see each other every day and have rings on our fingers. I don't know if everyone feels that way, but because we'd spent a couple of summers living together we knew how one another operated, and didn't have that adjustment to make when I moved in permanently.
That's my 2009 in a nutshell. Inevitably I've left things out, or glossed over things. Some are because it's another person's story to tell. Some because it didn't pop up on my radar right now. And some because I didn't feel like writing about it. But there's a basic overview of 2009.
I realize, given what I'm about to post in this blog, that I'm egregiously behind on my postings. But such is life and I have my own excuses (namely Christmas as a minister-it's a slightly busy time of year) but regardless. I've been absent from the blog for a while but...here I am.
During my "blog break" I thought about why it is I blog in the first place. I mean, I really don't think there are untold numbers of people who read this thing. Maybe 10. However, I feel that I have things to share and that maybe-eventually-someone else will read something I've written and get to thinking about it. So it's really just a public forum for me to jot down my thoughts and beliefs about certain things. I toyed with just letting the blog go, but decided that the discipline of writing on it every few days would be good for me.
Now, I'm not one for making New Year's Resolutions-saying I resolve to do something has never really gotten me into gear about anything. I do realize, however, that the new year is a time for us to stop and reflect on what has happened in the past year and what we would like to accomplish in the year to come. It's a spring cleaning in a way, but one that happens in January. To be perfectly honest, though, I find Lent to be a much more helpful time for any kind of personal evaluation and cleaning up. That may just be me, though. So in the spirit of the New Year, I figured I would give a short summary of my 2009, and then go on to what I would like to accomplish for 2010 (part of which involves this blog). So, without further ado:
2009 in Review
January 1 2009 didn't feel like much of a new year, to be honest. As a person who is still set to a school calendar (even though I'm not in school at the moment-I hope to be soon and I also work with high school kids who are obviously set to a school calendar) January 1 has always felt like it was in the middle. But it was a new year nevertheless. R and I spent it with two good friends at their apartment drinking Bourbon Barrel beer and watching The Office. It was wonderful. My brother was home for the first time since his November cancer diagnosis, and it was good to be home with him, as opposed to in a hospital room or in the house he was renting (although it was a nice house, it wasn't home). School started, and then my paternal grandmother passed away very unexpectedly. My sister couldn't attend the funeral because of her job, my brother was in the hospital for chemo so my mom went out there, and I traveled to PA--through a crazy snowstorm no less-to be with my Dad. I preached at her funeral, which was especially poignant as my Gorgeous Ma was looking forward to my June ordination. While this might sound bad, though it's not meant to, I'm glad hers was the first funeral homily I gave. Barack Obama was inaugurated while I was out there for the funeral-never had I felt so much hope in a new president.
February I went to Canterbury, which was awesome as it's my favorite city in England. I also started getting rejections from the PhD programs to which I applied, and thus the job search began. That took up most of my spring, and to be honest I found it to be a pretty stressful and maybe even horrible process. I felt alone in the search, but that could just be because it was a crappy time for my whole family, I got rejected from every program, and I wasn't finding any job that would have me because I was going to be unable to move to their town. Commuting wasn't an option for many of these churches. And, on top of everything, the economy was busted and no one wanted to hire an assistant. Ugh. That was the word for February through April really. And even into May. The bright spot was that N's scans at the end of his chemo showed NO signs of cancer. Thankfulness is not the word to express how we all felt at that moment. We continue to pray over the next year that it will stay gone.
But praise God I did find a job (I think it was finalized in June, or late May-one of the two) and I graduated from YDS. Then I headed home for the summer. It was really great to be home. My nephew turned 3 and gets more and more fun every time I see him. My family was closer, I would argue, after my brother's illness and so it was good just to spend some time healing with everyone (although I don't think it was a conscious healing-it was a healing-by-presence). The hard part was that R was up here, and I was down there, and we didn't see each other for something like 8 or 10 weeks. Thank God for Skype!!!
And then...THE WEDDING!!!! It was an absolutely perfect day. I think maybe I blogged about it, so you can see what I said there. Perfect is the best word to describe it. And the honeymoon was AWESOME. We went to Disney World (I hadn't been since I was 7) and I think I may be addicted. It was so wonderful-I want to go back this year! And every year, really.
The fall brought changes. I moved into R's house and we've been working on making it our house. I started my first September without being in school. My job is great, but I admit I feel such a pull toward the academic world that it was really hard not starting classes this fall. I started PhD applications (again), however. By December I'd finished 9 applications, and am now praying that I'll be able to follow my academic vocation next fall. Otherwise it's time for more discernment, which will be hard as all discernment inevitably is. Good, but hard. R and I are adjusting the married life just great, I think. It's funny though, people would ask me pretty early on how it felt to be married. I said it felt the same, only we see each other every day and have rings on our fingers. I don't know if everyone feels that way, but because we'd spent a couple of summers living together we knew how one another operated, and didn't have that adjustment to make when I moved in permanently.
That's my 2009 in a nutshell. Inevitably I've left things out, or glossed over things. Some are because it's another person's story to tell. Some because it didn't pop up on my radar right now. And some because I didn't feel like writing about it. But there's a basic overview of 2009.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Thankfulness
I realize it's a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving, but this morning I had a real moment of thankfulness. In lieu of anything else to blog about at the moment (that you don't already know-applications, applications, ummm...is there anything else right now?) I figured I would write about this.
I work about 56 miles away from where I live. The commute is about 1:25 each way, which could be worse. Luckily it's a pretty drive and it gives me time to pray in the mornings (although I would still love to have a 15 minute commute and just pray NOT in a car). As this is my first year in this job, we're still figuring out how winter is going to work-especially now that winter has really just gotten here. Today was the first test case of how this might roll.
Yesterday the weather was calling for a winter weather advisory-not so bad and something I could reasonably get to work in. The plan was to get up around 5, check the weather, shovel whatever snow there was, and get on the road by 6:30ish in time for the 9 AM staff meeting. My "boss" is overly cautious about me going in on bad weather days, but I really do want to be there unless it's really bad, especially for staff meetings. So this morning I got up at 5:10, rolled over, checked my handy dandy iPhone, and it had changed to a winter storm warning. I looked at the weather report, emailed the office administrator, and tried to go back to sleep (although I was kind of awake by then but eventually got back to sleep). R, however, was not so lucky. He doesn't have the choice, really, to stay home when the weather's bad. I mean, he could stay home but that would involve using vacation, sick, or personal time-and he doesn't have much of that, especially in December. For him it's a matter of "do I take the train-which costs time and money-or do I drive-which costs concentration and more time." He tends to drive (I would take the train, but that's just me).
I realized just how thankful I am to be in a compassionate working environment. This isn't to say that R's place of work isn't full of nice people-it is-he just has a more traditional work setting that requires you to be there and if you're not, it costs you. I keep thinking of ways this could be better. I mean, seriously, in urban environments where people have long commutes (R's is about 1:30 each way), when the weather is bad they spend a good deal of their concentration on the morning commute and would likely go into work mentally worn out-and it's only 9 AM! There has to be a better way around this. Ideally it would be not living so far away from one's place of employment, but that's not a possibility in this case.
So anyway, I'm thankful for having a place to work, particularly one that doesn't make me drive in when the weather is crazy.
In other news, I'm planning a beer post sometime soon. And I finished a couple of books. And my applications are almost halfway done. And Christmas is on the way! And Advent is definitely here. : )
The kittens are going insane so I'd better go. Cheers, everyone!
I work about 56 miles away from where I live. The commute is about 1:25 each way, which could be worse. Luckily it's a pretty drive and it gives me time to pray in the mornings (although I would still love to have a 15 minute commute and just pray NOT in a car). As this is my first year in this job, we're still figuring out how winter is going to work-especially now that winter has really just gotten here. Today was the first test case of how this might roll.
Yesterday the weather was calling for a winter weather advisory-not so bad and something I could reasonably get to work in. The plan was to get up around 5, check the weather, shovel whatever snow there was, and get on the road by 6:30ish in time for the 9 AM staff meeting. My "boss" is overly cautious about me going in on bad weather days, but I really do want to be there unless it's really bad, especially for staff meetings. So this morning I got up at 5:10, rolled over, checked my handy dandy iPhone, and it had changed to a winter storm warning. I looked at the weather report, emailed the office administrator, and tried to go back to sleep (although I was kind of awake by then but eventually got back to sleep). R, however, was not so lucky. He doesn't have the choice, really, to stay home when the weather's bad. I mean, he could stay home but that would involve using vacation, sick, or personal time-and he doesn't have much of that, especially in December. For him it's a matter of "do I take the train-which costs time and money-or do I drive-which costs concentration and more time." He tends to drive (I would take the train, but that's just me).
I realized just how thankful I am to be in a compassionate working environment. This isn't to say that R's place of work isn't full of nice people-it is-he just has a more traditional work setting that requires you to be there and if you're not, it costs you. I keep thinking of ways this could be better. I mean, seriously, in urban environments where people have long commutes (R's is about 1:30 each way), when the weather is bad they spend a good deal of their concentration on the morning commute and would likely go into work mentally worn out-and it's only 9 AM! There has to be a better way around this. Ideally it would be not living so far away from one's place of employment, but that's not a possibility in this case.
So anyway, I'm thankful for having a place to work, particularly one that doesn't make me drive in when the weather is crazy.
In other news, I'm planning a beer post sometime soon. And I finished a couple of books. And my applications are almost halfway done. And Christmas is on the way! And Advent is definitely here. : )
The kittens are going insane so I'd better go. Cheers, everyone!
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Best. Thing. Ever.
OK I know I've posted lots of videos lately and not anything of substance, but I plan to change that in the near future. However, tomorrow's Sunday and I have a long and full day so I'll put off my entry (that and my first PhD app is due on Tuesday).
So here's something for you. You've probably already seen it, but I've seen it at least 5 times in the last three days and it only gets better. AND R just showed me the original Queen video and it's even better having seen that now!
Enjoy. :)
So here's something for you. You've probably already seen it, but I've seen it at least 5 times in the last three days and it only gets better. AND R just showed me the original Queen video and it's even better having seen that now!
Enjoy. :)
Friday, November 20, 2009
Friday, November 06, 2009
Dag nab it.
I just took a moment to total up the costs for my PhD applications this year. Kinda ridiculous...
Transcripts: 171.00
GRE Score reports: 180.00
Application fees: 655.00
For a grand total of...1006.00
Good thing I already set aside the money for this, otherwise I might be freaking out at this point. What makes this a tough pill to swallow is that nothing is guaranteed, and like last year I could spend money on apps (although last year I only applied to 3 places) and not get in anywhere.
For a variety of reasons, I pray pray PRAY that doesn't happen this time.
Transcripts: 171.00
GRE Score reports: 180.00
Application fees: 655.00
For a grand total of...1006.00
Good thing I already set aside the money for this, otherwise I might be freaking out at this point. What makes this a tough pill to swallow is that nothing is guaranteed, and like last year I could spend money on apps (although last year I only applied to 3 places) and not get in anywhere.
For a variety of reasons, I pray pray PRAY that doesn't happen this time.
Nope...
...I haven't forgotten you all or my blogging! I'm just in the midst of trying to get some crazy PhD application stuff done. I've spent the past two days getting everything ready to send to my recommenders, which has involved an inordinate amount of time checking every application deadline and how the rec's are done for each application. Since I'm applying to nine places, that's quite alot of website checking. And it's annoying. But that's done, and the CV is basically updated (although more and more I look at it and feel like it needs to be reconfigured but I don't really have the time or energy to do so right now-the pertinent information is on there and that's what counts). My current dilemma is that the YDS journal I was published in never sent me a hard copy, and I can't figure out who the official publisher was. I think that information was emailed to me at some point, but it was mailed to my Yale account which no longer exists; thus, I'm stuck and don't know how to list that publication but really really want to because it would look good in the applications! Arg. Frustration to the max. I also need to add up costs, but they're not going to be fun. The GRE scores will cost 180.00 to forward, and transcripts will probably come close to 80-90 (but hopefully less, some are stupid cheap and some are expensive-Yale is expensive, Harvard is cheap, WKU is in the middle. Weird).
My next project is to get my writing sample up to snuff. I have three options at this point, and am torn about which to go with. My Herbert paper is in final form (that's the one that was published) and should be ready to go, but I think it's the least historically-oriented paper I've got. My BCP paper, which is the most historically oriented, needs alot of work and it's also about the topic I want to study for a PhD. I wary of submitting that paper (even if it were in final form) because I don't want it to look like Ive already done everything on this topic. I'm trying to demonstrate some breadth....
Which leads me to my third paper, which was actually a midterm I wrote for my prayer book class last year. While it's a midterm, it was a mini research paper (about 14 pages) and compares the sacramental theologies in two liturgies written during the prayer book proscription of the 1650s. So it's apropos, but not exactly on topic as the BCP paper is. It's a little less historically oriented (in an obvious way) but deals with primary source texts from my period. I think that's the one I'll go with, unless I have a last minute change of heart!
Other than that, R and I are planning to go to Plimouth Plantation tomorrow. Growing up, I always read these books about Sarah Morton and Nathaniel somebody and their "day"-the books were photographed at Plimouth and they're about the lives of pilgrim children, basically. I've always wanted to go to this place to check it out, so we're going tomorrow! And it's only a few weeks before Thanksgiving so it's especially timely. I'm such a dweeb, but I'm stoked! R is a little excited because they have venison burgers there and he's never had venison, so he can check another animal off of his food chain list. Ha. He cracks me up.
Oh and we brewed beer last weekend! I'll post photos soon of the brewing. We'll bottle next weekend and then another 2 weeks of conditioning in the bottles and then...we get to taste it! But more on that later. Soon you'll hopefully have beer pics and pilgrim pics.
But not now. I have to give you something to look forward to, right?
My next project is to get my writing sample up to snuff. I have three options at this point, and am torn about which to go with. My Herbert paper is in final form (that's the one that was published) and should be ready to go, but I think it's the least historically-oriented paper I've got. My BCP paper, which is the most historically oriented, needs alot of work and it's also about the topic I want to study for a PhD. I wary of submitting that paper (even if it were in final form) because I don't want it to look like Ive already done everything on this topic. I'm trying to demonstrate some breadth....
Which leads me to my third paper, which was actually a midterm I wrote for my prayer book class last year. While it's a midterm, it was a mini research paper (about 14 pages) and compares the sacramental theologies in two liturgies written during the prayer book proscription of the 1650s. So it's apropos, but not exactly on topic as the BCP paper is. It's a little less historically oriented (in an obvious way) but deals with primary source texts from my period. I think that's the one I'll go with, unless I have a last minute change of heart!
Other than that, R and I are planning to go to Plimouth Plantation tomorrow. Growing up, I always read these books about Sarah Morton and Nathaniel somebody and their "day"-the books were photographed at Plimouth and they're about the lives of pilgrim children, basically. I've always wanted to go to this place to check it out, so we're going tomorrow! And it's only a few weeks before Thanksgiving so it's especially timely. I'm such a dweeb, but I'm stoked! R is a little excited because they have venison burgers there and he's never had venison, so he can check another animal off of his food chain list. Ha. He cracks me up.
Oh and we brewed beer last weekend! I'll post photos soon of the brewing. We'll bottle next weekend and then another 2 weeks of conditioning in the bottles and then...we get to taste it! But more on that later. Soon you'll hopefully have beer pics and pilgrim pics.
But not now. I have to give you something to look forward to, right?
Friday, October 30, 2009
Hmm.
Nothing major to report right now, I just thought I would let you all know I hadn't forgotten the blogsphere or my attempts at being more regular about it. Things are going alright-applications still getting done, I guess, and doing work. Right now R and I are watching Ghost Adventures Live. It's kind of boring so far, I think. Maybe that's just me. Ummm...tomorrow night I'm taking the youth group trick or treating and having a lock in at the rector's house. Not sure how it's going to go, though, as I keep being told of more and more kids who aren't coming. Lame. It's not like I would have had nothing better to do on Halloween. Lame lame lame. I hope some of them at least show up (who aren't the rectors kids-they're great but we're just having the lock in at their house so that wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary for them). We'll see I guess.
In other news...yeah. There really isn't too much other news. We're brewing tomorrow morning now that R's car is finished up, and then we'll go for a hike or something else. Don't know yet, though.
And I'm tired of New England at the moment. Well, I'm usually tired of New England, but situations put us here for now. I look forward to moving back to the South though. That's home, not this foreign country that's part of the US of A.
Sorry. I'm in a bleh mood. Not bad. Not great. Just bleh. Perhaps it's the thought that very few will show up tomorrow night and it will feel like a waste of time.
Lame.
In other news...yeah. There really isn't too much other news. We're brewing tomorrow morning now that R's car is finished up, and then we'll go for a hike or something else. Don't know yet, though.
And I'm tired of New England at the moment. Well, I'm usually tired of New England, but situations put us here for now. I look forward to moving back to the South though. That's home, not this foreign country that's part of the US of A.
Sorry. I'm in a bleh mood. Not bad. Not great. Just bleh. Perhaps it's the thought that very few will show up tomorrow night and it will feel like a waste of time.
Lame.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Carl Sagan Jams Out
OK so I'm not really into the whole "space thing." I find it kind of interesting, but I'm not some huge advocate for space exploration. Yes, I realize there are reasons for exploring space. I also realize that we know very little about our own earth (look at the oceans! Watch Sea Quest DSV people!) and I realize that most people on this earth can barely eat. I'm not taking an ethical position here.
However, R really loves space stuff (I especially do if it involves Futurama...). His friends told him about this video, and he posted it on his Facebook wall. And now I'm sharing it with you all, just because I find it pretty friggin' great-the video is hilarious, not in a laugh out loud way but in a "Carl Sagan is one smooth MF". So enjoy!
However, R really loves space stuff (I especially do if it involves Futurama...). His friends told him about this video, and he posted it on his Facebook wall. And now I'm sharing it with you all, just because I find it pretty friggin' great-the video is hilarious, not in a laugh out loud way but in a "Carl Sagan is one smooth MF". So enjoy!
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
So...R and I went on our honeymoon to Disney World. I hadn't been since I was 7.
It was AMAZING. I can't even begin to convey to you how much fun we had-we still talk about how fun that trip was. Everything about it was awesome. The people that work there are genuinely friendly. There's TONS to do. It's a world unto itself, and it's so friggin' fantastic.
I warned R that he was going to create an addict, and he did. I'm so ready to go back! I think he would prefer less frequent visits but I'm ready to go again, as in soon. I think everything 6 months should suffice.
I don't know why this is on my mind at the moment. I think the recent bit of cold weather and the fact that R has had to work on the car so much lately (which is hopefully fingers crossed please please please going to be done in the next day or two) has made me crave sun and being in a fun place where there's zero responsibility on my part. And if I get into a PhD program (which I really really really hope I do this time around) I realized that I don't have the luxury of going on a vacation in, say, February again for a while-not that we're going on vacation in February, it's just kinda cool to think that we could if we had the time and money for it. Such a novelty.
OK I'm off to think about Mickey and the awesome popcorn at Magic Kingdom some more. If any of you want to go with me on vacation to WDW anytime soon, gimme a heads up so I can start saving...
8(|: ) -that's supposed to be a mickey hat...
It was AMAZING. I can't even begin to convey to you how much fun we had-we still talk about how fun that trip was. Everything about it was awesome. The people that work there are genuinely friendly. There's TONS to do. It's a world unto itself, and it's so friggin' fantastic.
I warned R that he was going to create an addict, and he did. I'm so ready to go back! I think he would prefer less frequent visits but I'm ready to go again, as in soon. I think everything 6 months should suffice.
I don't know why this is on my mind at the moment. I think the recent bit of cold weather and the fact that R has had to work on the car so much lately (which is hopefully fingers crossed please please please going to be done in the next day or two) has made me crave sun and being in a fun place where there's zero responsibility on my part. And if I get into a PhD program (which I really really really hope I do this time around) I realized that I don't have the luxury of going on a vacation in, say, February again for a while-not that we're going on vacation in February, it's just kinda cool to think that we could if we had the time and money for it. Such a novelty.
OK I'm off to think about Mickey and the awesome popcorn at Magic Kingdom some more. If any of you want to go with me on vacation to WDW anytime soon, gimme a heads up so I can start saving...
8(|: ) -that's supposed to be a mickey hat...
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